Stella Maris (novel)

Last updated
Stella Maris
Stella Maris (Cormac McCarthy).png
Author Cormac McCarthy
Audio read by Julia Whelan
Edoardo Ballerini
LanguageEnglish
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date
December 6, 2022
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint
Pages208
ISBN 978-0-307-26900-3
Preceded by The Passenger  

Stella Maris is a 2022 novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy that was published on December 6, 2022. [1] It is a companion novel to The Passenger . [2] It was the final novel published before his death on June 13, 2023. [3] It consists primarily of dialogue with little narration, exploring the nature of the protagonist's delusions and topics such as quantum mechanics and phenomenology.

Contents

Plot

The novel follows Alicia Western, a math prodigy conflicted by her father's contributions to the American development of the atomic bomb. [2] The entire novel is set in 1972 in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, at the titular Stella Maris, "a non-denominational facility and hospice for the care of psychiatric medical patients," as stated on page 3 (the only page that is not written in dialogue). The novel consists of a "series of conversations between Alicia and her psychiatrist, Dr. Cohen, written like a play but with no exposition, stage directions, or dialogue tags. The subjects include mathematics, quantum mechanics, music theory, and obscure philosophy." [4]

Development

In a 2009 interview, McCarthy said that he had been "planning on writing about a woman for 50 years". [2]

Publication

Announced in March 2022, [2] Stella Maris was published by Knopf on December 6, 2022, [1] one month after its companion novel The Passenger . [2]

Translations

As of mid-2024, the book has been translated into:

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amati</span> Family of Italian violin makers

Amati is the last name of a family of Italian violin makers who lived at Cremona from about 1538 to 1740. Their importance is considered equal to those of the Bergonzi, Guarneri, and Stradivari families. Today, violins created by Nicolò Amati are valued at around $600,000. Because of their age and rarity, Amati instruments are mostly kept in museum or private collections and are seldom played in public.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catamite</span> Pubescent male companion in a pederastic relationship in ancient Greece and Rome

In ancient Greece and Rome, a catamite was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of an older male, usually in a pederastic relationship. It was generally a term of affection and literally means "Ganymede" in Latin, but it was also used as a term of insult when directed toward a grown man. The word derives from the proper noun Catamitus, the Latinized form of Ganymede, the name of the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer, according to Greek mythology. The Etruscan form of the name was Catmite, from an alternative Greek form of the name, Gadymedes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cormac McCarthy</span> American writer (1933–2023)

Cormac McCarthy was an American writer who wrote twelve novels, two plays, five screenplays, and three short stories, spanning the Western, postapocalyptic, and southern gothic genres. His works often include graphic depictions of violence, and his writing style is characterised by a sparse use of punctuation and attribution. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.

Ernst Carl Gerlach Stueckelberg was a Swiss mathematician and physicist, regarded as one of the most eminent physicists of the 20th century.

<i>Blood Meridian</i> 1985 epic historical novel by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian; or, The Evening Redness in the West is a 1985 epic historical novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, classified under the Western, or sometimes the anti-Western, genre. McCarthy's fifth book, it was published by Random House.

<i>The Crossing</i> (McCarthy novel) 1994 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, published in 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf. The book is the second installment of McCarthy's "Border Trilogy," following the award-winning All the Pretty Horses (1992), to which The Crossing has been both favorably and unfavorably compared.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carleen Hutchins</span> American inventor

Carleen Maley Hutchins was an American high school science teacher, violinmaker and researcher, best known for her creation, in the 1950s/60s, of a family of eight proportionally-sized violins now known as the violin octet and for a considerable body of research into the acoustics of violins. She was born in Springfield, Massachusetts and worked at her home in Montclair, New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred A. Knopf</span> American publishing house

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. is an American publishing house that was founded by Blanche Knopf and Alfred A. Knopf Sr. in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in addition to leading American literary trends. It was acquired by Random House in 1960, and is now part of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group division of Penguin Random House which is owned by the German conglomerate Bertelsmann.

Stella Maris may refer to:

<i>The Road</i> 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and nearly all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.

<i>The Sunset Limited</i> 2006 play by Cormac McCarthy

The Sunset Limited is a play by American writer Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy's second published play, it was first produced by the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago on May 18, 2006, and it traveled to New York City later that same year. The play was published in a paperback edition about the same time that it opened in New York. Some consider it to be more a novel than a true play, partly because of its subtitle, "A Novel in Dramatic Form".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tom McCarthy (novelist)</span> English writer and artist (born 1969)

Tom McCarthy is an English writer and artist. In the wake of Brexit, he gained Swedish citizenship. His debut novel, Remainder, was published in 2005. McCarthy has twice been shortlisted for the Man Booker, and was awarded the inaugural Windham-Campbell Literature Prize by Yale University in 2013. He won a Believer Book Award for Remainder in 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marie NDiaye</span> French novelist and playwright (born 1967)

Marie NDiaye is a French novelist, playwright and screenwriter. She published her first novel, Quant au riche avenir, when she was 17. She won the Prix Goncourt in 2009. Her play Papa doit manger is the sole play by a living female writer to be part of the repertoire of the Comédie française. She co-wrote the screenplay for the 2022 legal drama Saint Omer alongside its director Alice Diop, and Amrita David. In September 2022 the film was selected as France's official selection for Best International Film at the 95th Academy Awards.

<i>The Gardeners Son</i> (screenplay) 1996 screenplay written by Cormac McCarthy

The Gardener's Son: A Screenplay is the print screenplay for the 1977 television film of the same name, written by Cormac McCarthy. The book was first published in September 1996 by Ecco Press. Based on an 1876 murder case in the mill town of Graniteville, South Carolina, the story follows Robert McEvoy—an embittered young man whose father works as a gardener for the mill-owning Gregg family—as a chain of events lead to his killing of James Gregg and an ensuing trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jeff Nichols</span> American filmmaker (born 1978)

Jeff Nichols is an American film director and screenwriter. His films are characterized by their Southern United States backdrop and ambience. He is also known for his longstanding collaboration with actor Michael Shannon, who has appeared in all of his feature films to date.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cormac McCarthy bibliography</span>

A list of works by or about Cormac McCarthy, the American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. McCarthy published twelve novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and post-apocalyptic genres, as well as multiple short-stories, screenplays, plays, and an essay.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Kekulé Problem</span> 2017 essay by Cormac McCarthy

"The Kekulé Problem" is a 2017 essay written by the American author Cormac McCarthy for the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). It was McCarthy's first published work of non-fiction. The science magazine Nautilus first ran the article online on April 20, 2017, then printed it as the cover story for an issue on the subject of consciousness. David Krakauer, an American evolutionary biologist who had known McCarthy for two decades, wrote a brief introduction. Don Kilpatrick III provided illustrations.

<i>The Passenger</i> (McCarthy novel) 2022 novel by Cormac McCarthy

The Passenger is a 2022 novel by the American writer Cormac McCarthy. It was released six weeks before its companion novel Stella Maris. The plot of both The Passenger and Stella Maris follows Bobby and Alicia Western, two siblings whose father helped develop the atomic bomb.

Perspectives on Cormac McCarthy is a 1999 collection of essays critiquing the works of Cormac McCarthy from his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, originally published in 1965, up through Cities of the Plain, published in 1998. Perspectives was edited by Edwin T. Arnold and Diane C Luce. Each editor contributed two essays apiece to the collection of eleven essays. This book covers all of McCarthy's major works published at that time, with the exception of his 1994 drama The Stonemason. Perspectives was published in 1999 by University Press of Mississippi.

<i>The Cormac McCarthy Journal</i> Academic journal

The Cormac McCarthy Journal is a biannual peer-reviewed academic journal of literary criticism dedicated to the study of the American author Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023). The journal launched in 2001 as an annual publication of the Cormac McCarthy Society. Since 2015, issues are published on a biannual basis by the Penn State University Press.

References

  1. 1 2 Grobar, Matt (March 8, 2022). "New Cormac McCarthy Novels 'The Passenger' And 'Stella Maris' To Be Published By Knopf This Fall". Deadline. Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Cain, Sian (March 8, 2022). "Cormac McCarthy: two new novels coming in 2022, 16 years after The Road". The Guardian . Archived from the original on August 3, 2022. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
  3. "Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road, dies aged 89". BBC News . 13 June 2023. Retrieved 13 June 2023.
  4. "Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy".
  5. Cormac McCarthy (2024). Stella Maris. The Passenger, 2 (in Czech). Argo. p. 200. ISBN   978-80-257-4369-0.
  6. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Polish). Literackie. p. 268. ISBN   978-83-08-08133-4.
  7. Cormac McCarthy (2024). Sutera Marisuステラ・マリス (in Japanese). Hayakawa Publishing. p. 272. ISBN   978-4-15-210310-9.
  8. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in German). Rowohlt Verlag. p. 240. ISBN   978-3-498-00336-4.
  9. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Passageraren; Stella Maris (in Swedish). Albert Bonniers Förlag. p. 678. ISBN   978-91-0-019924-1.
  10. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Korean). Munhak Dongnae. ISBN   978-89-546-9662-3.
  11. Cormac McCarthy (2022). El pasajero / Stella Maris (in Spanish). Literatura Random House. p. 624. ISBN   978-84-397-4070-4.
  12. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in Norwegian). Oslo: Gyldendal. p. 220. ISBN   978-82-05-57704-6.
  13. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (in Dutch). De Arbeiderspers. p. 208. ISBN   978-90-295-4753-6.
  14. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in Italian). Einaudi. ISBN   978-88-06-25958-7.
  15. Cormac McCarthy (2023). Stella Maris (in French). Éditions de l'olivier. p. 250. ISBN   978-2-8236-1971-3.
  16. Cormac McCarthy (2022). Stella Maris (Em Portugues do Brasil) (in Portuguese). Alfaguara. p. 184. ISBN   978-85-5652-162-0.
  17. McCarthy, Cormac (2022). Stella Maris. The Passenger (in Greek). Vol. 2. Translated by Greek: Γιώργος Κυριαζής. Gutenberg. p. 263. ISBN   9789600123999.
  18. McCarthy, Cormac (2023). Stella Maris (in Romanian). Translated by Iulia Gorzo. Humanitas Fiction. p. 216. ISBN   9786060973249.